Not Just A Paycheck By Film Review

A loss of employment could affect an individual because they then have a reduction in income and possibly not afford to keep payments on the mortgage therefore losing the family home. The financial strain could also mean less money is being spent on basic needs such as food, affecting the individuals physical well being, Emotionally the individual could suffer from a low self esteem, lack of confidence and a depreciating value of self worth. It could also lead to high levels of anxiety wondering when another job will come up. Additionally this could lead to stress and cause problems within close family relationships. These effects could be magnified if it is the main bread winner in the family who has lost their job.

The unemployment rate has gone so high that it leaves families to deal with psychological and economic effects of the impact of unemployment. Unemployment has caused many people to have to foreclose on their homes. The vast majority are hit hard in the black communities.

In Barbara Ehrenreich's bold and honest book she tackles the issue of poverty in America head on, by becoming a low wage worker herself. Ehrenreich delves into the often unheard of issues relating to poverty and low wage work, providing her readers with a new perspective on America's working poor and manages to give her audience a stark emotional, yet logical and factual, look into the working class' poverty epidemic. She uses her own anecdotal evidence and supports it with statistics and facts, appeals to ethos by challenging the ethics of corporate America and it costs, finally she hits an emotional chord with readers by reminding them of what low wage workers must endure so that we can live in our America.

Together, they made around $83,000 and had around $90,000 in assets which placed them solidly in the middle class. Twelve years later, Allison and David experienced setbacks but increased their income to about $125,000. Their financial assets quadrupled to a whopping $368,000 and saved up thousands of dollars for retirement. However, with the economy downsizing on the heels of the Great Recession and uneven job recovery heavily tilted toward low-wage jobs, David joined millions of other Americans in unemployment. Having spent half a year unemployed, David returned to work working at a significantly lower wage. Over the course of 12 years, David witnessed how work became less stable and more contingent for many Americans. The working experience illustrates a larger transformation in America’s employment landscape, away from middle-class jobs and jobs with significant benefits toward low-paying jobs with few benefits, accelerated by the Great Recession.

Everyone in the world wants and needs to make money one way or the other. People in the world say that money is not everything. Money does not equal successs. Money does not It give back themselves an oppurtunity to feed themselves, or enjoy the luxuries that America has to offer. When reading Wilson's Article, “When work disappears” According to the trading economies in the United States of America, the US unemployment rate was recorded at 4.9 percent in August of 2016, which not been changed two months prior. 7.8 million people in the United States are without jobs. Making it hard for an Average American to live comfortable. William Julius Wilson’s article “When Work Disappears” discusses the disappearance of work in the industrialized

Issues like downsizing and overseas relocation had always seemed distant to me until my co-workers at one factory told me that the unit I was working in would be shut down within six months and moved to Mexico, where people would work for 60 cents an hour”, in this statement he gives the readers reasons for factory work being a hard way to live. Lastly, this statement he made, “The things that factory work has taught me how lucky I am to get an education, how to work hard, how easy it is to lose that work once you have it are by no means earth-shattering” the author is giving examples of the different lessons that leads to my main claim about his purposes for writing his article.

Throughout the book we see several reoccurring patterns and themes. One of those is how workers continuously try to allocate income to food, lodging, and medical care. It is interesting to see how they, and Ehrenreich manage this feat. We also see the relationship between dead-end jobs and poverty traps, and the many obstacles Ehrenreichs’ characters faced. And, finally we see how applicable Ehrenreich’s experience, and that of low-wage workers are, by drawing comparisons to Madison, Wisconsin.

Barbara describes in great detail, the hard work, everyday suffering and sacrifices that poverty-stricken Americans experience. She explains how workers of unpleasing jobs suffer from “chronic

Throughout the book Ehrenreich’s co-workers all seem to struggle, such as the trouble with housing in Key West and healthcare in Maine. Having a place to live, eating properly, and healthcare seem to be the biggest cause of concern within the working class. Most of the jobs that she worked, the workers did not have healthcare packages or benefits. So it wasn’t uncommon for them to have trouble trying to manage their health and struggle to pay for medication, let alone a visit to the doctor. Without healthcare and a lack of proper diet (in Maine she had a ‘thirty minute’ lunch break but most of her co-workers barely ate anything close to a meal) it is not hard to see how the working class can easily be shot into poverty; seeing as most of the working class that she had encountered were just living above the poverty line. Reading about what she noticed and noted about her co-workers it isn’t hard to imagine how easy it would be to fall below the poverty

For example, the main character Jurgis is a hard working man with the determined philosophy of “I will just work harder.” Every time something begins to go wrong he comes back with that same philosophy and begins his toil in the Stockyards again. However, no matter how hard Jurgis worked, he and his family were still always stuck in the same dreadfulness. “This was in truth not living; it was scarcely even existing, and they felt that it was too little for the price they paid. They were willing to work all the time; and when people did their best, ought they not to be able to keep alive?” The family eventually lost the battle to keep a roof over their head and food in their stomachs. It wasn’t because of a lack of trying but the because of the corrupt labor system and big business principles. “Here was Durham 's, for instance, owned by a man who was trying to make as much money out of it as he could, and did not care in the least how he did it; and underneath him, ranged in ranks and grades like an army… each one driving the man next below him and trying to squeeze out of him as much work as possible. And all the men of the same rank were pitted against each other…every man lived in terror of losing his job, if another made a better record than he.” So, as previously mentioned, their work ethic meant nothing in the end. No matter how hard they worked, they were continuously victims. “Jurgis could see all the truth now- could see himself, through the whole

He is very convincing that blue collar work is hard and tolling, rather than applying one’s self to essays and school work. The author states factories move or downsize causing jobs to be unreliable. Machines breakdown also causing downtime in your work. While being away at school is far less stress and sleeping in rather than being at the factory bright and early in the mornings.

For example, the workers earned more money than they did in other places. The book says, “The pay reflected her proficiency, she was making almost 2.50 a week above her 1.75 board.”(86) Two dollars and fifty cents was a lot of money back then. This money, workers earn from factories could help children and people from poor families support their families and to give them a chance to improve their lives. However, even if wages were better in factories than other places, workers would have to pay another way, with endangerment to their lives and sometimes even with tier lives. Many workers would be hurt and die because of these working environment. Which is the price they will have to pay for higher wages. To add on, as stated in this essay previously the girls aren’t making as much as they should. In Lyddie, workers complain their wages have went lower a lot. Even if factories offer a lot more money than other places the workers aren’t really earning their true wages not to add on the bad working environment that harm the workers health. A petition has to be signed to protect workers’ rights.

Every American dreams of finding a job that pays well enough so that they may comfortably take care of their loved ones and themselves for years to come. Most Americans hope to find some way to make a living that they enjoy, something that they view as productive. Unfortunately, many do not have this luxury. In our society, a good portion of the population is forced to hold the base of our country in place while hardly being redeemed for their time and effort, and thus the problem of income inequality. Numbers of these people live from paycheck to paycheck, barely getting by, not because they manage their money poorly, but because the value of their time at work is negligible.

It is a story about a newly unemployed man, Daniel Blake, seeking disability benefits as he is unable to work due to a heart condition, and a young single mother, Katie who is seeking welfare’s help to get ‘back to school’ clothes for her kids. This film shows the suffering Daniel and Katie go through due to the lack of support from social welfare system. The welfare office is trying to reduce the amount of people claiming, so because of this they make it extremely hard for Katie and Daniel to gain any sort of benefits. Daniel must try to adapt in order to survive while Katie resorts to crime as a means of survival in

Work can cause many issues with oneself and society. There can be a inner struggle in someone if they don’t like their job. Society can cause the discussion of jobs to become a controversial topic. In the poems “Lady In The Pink Mustang” by Louise Erdrich, “The Restaurant Business” by James Tate, and “So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs From Americans” by Jimmy Santiago Baca, the authors use divisions and conflicts to make readers see a bigger picture.